Sign up for POLITICO Magazine's weekly email: The Friday Cover

Don't Ransom Journalists

One day in 2007, I was being shown my bedroom at the Washington Post’s bureau and house in Baghdad, where I was spending some time covering the U.S. military side of the war. I noticed an old AK-47 rifle leaning against the wall near the door of my room. The Post’s local security chief, a tough-minded Iraqi, explained that it was for me to use “if they come into the house.” When I heard “them” come upstairs, he advised, I should fire most of the weapon’s magazine through the door, which might hold them off for a few minutes. But, he added, “save one for yourself.”

Most Popular

I recalled that bracing exchange when I read the news last week of the murder of reporter and photographer James Foley by Islamic extremists in Syria. I was sorely saddened to see his name added to the list of journalists who have lost their lives covering conflict in the Middle East—nearly 50 last year alone. Reportedly, Foley was killed after the United States declined to pay a multi-million dollar ransom for his release. My heart goes out to his family. But I also think that the American policy of not ransoming reporters held hostage is a good one, both moral and wise. This is because I fear that governments who are believed to pay for the release of their citizens—France and Italy are mentioned most often—increase the risk of other of their citizens being taken. The payoffs also provide millions of dollars in financing for the most brutal terrorist groups, making them stronger and helping them grow. This in turn can create markets for hostages, in which freelance criminal gangs grab Westerners and then sell them to the highest bidder.

As the Post’s security chief in Baghdad so vividly reminded me, reporters in war zones know that facing death is part of the deal. Every reporter in Iraq had to go through the mental calculations about what to do if kidnapped. One reporter I knew had been trained, if faced with kidnapping, to shout, “I am a journalist.” In the heat of the moment she confused her Arabic phrases and yelled to the men grabbing her, “I am a vegetarian!”—which was true, but also irrelevant. We even were issued laminated cards that we carried in our wallets with phone numbers of possible political intermediaries who might be called if one were taken hostage. This was not necessarily good for one’s mental health. The stresses on reporters in Iraq were huge, and I saw some age remarkably quickly. I don’t think editors back home ever really understood the mental and physical costs that are still being paid by many reporters, who lack even the limited support system that veterans have.

I remember going into the Green Zone, where the U.S. government made its headquarters (and where reporters did not live, contrary to what many people think), to attend a briefing by an American security official about the spate of kidnappings then underway in the Iraqi capital. “This is the most dangerous city in the world, Westerners are the most likely to be targeted, and you journalists are the most vulnerable Westerners,” he began. He was not telling us anything we did not already know. He didn’t have a lot of other helpful words.

We did not look to the American government for protection. Often it was part of the problem. Some of my most vulnerable moments in Iraq came when I walked in and out of the Green Zone. Going in, we waited in line at security checkpoints that sometimes were the target of car bombs. Going out, I used one of the two exits we were allowed to use, walking out and then waiting on the street for one of the Post’s cars to pick me up. There were still moments, even when I had closely coordinated by cell phone, when I stood alone on the busy Baghdad sidewalk, fully aware that insurgent groups watched the exits of the Green Zone to, among other things, identify and question Iraqis who worked there but lived outside it.

My own plan if I were kidnapped was that I would give my captors two days or so to sort out the situation, in case I had been taken out of some sort of confusion. (I knew one reporter who had been taken hostage in central Iraq, tied to a post in a rural animal shelter and then shown the rusty long-bladed knife that he was told would be used to cut off his head—but then was released within 24 hours.) After letting two days pass, I figured, I would try to escape, figuring that either I would succeed or I would be killed in the process. Either outcome would be preferable to being held for weeks, months or years.

I believed then—and still do—that my best protection was the American policy against ransom. If insurgents, extremists and criminals knew that kidnapping American reporters is not lucrative, that reduces the incentive to grab one. There still would be those who would kill Americans just to make a political point, but that would be a much smaller group. In the short run, the anti-ransom policy may have made life more dangerous for individual reporters, but in the long run, it makes them and other Americans in the Middle East somewhat safer.

Thomas E. Ricks writes “The Best Defense” blog for ForeignPolicy.com and is author of five books about the U.S. military.